Tom Finneran: Nixon/Kennedy, Two Thank Yous

Friday, September 05, 2014

Tom Finneran, GoLocal MINDSETTER™

 

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Good manners are always in vogue. “Thank you” is always in order. So thank you Mr. Presidents.

Our age seems to belittle good manners. Simple things like the phrases “yes Ma’am” or “no Sir” are mocked and belittled. Giving up one’s seat on the subway to a woman or to an older person is seen as weird and outdated behavior. And for our political leaders, no good deed goes unpunished or uncriticized. It’s as if we view them as creatures to entertain us until we decide to whip them into oblivion.

So, in pursuit of good manners and in recognition of good deeds, I hereby say “thank you” to Presidents Nixon and Kennedy.

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The culmination of summer on Labor Day weekend crystallized thoughts that I have carried for years regarding these two much-criticized Presidents. They each had their faults and their demons---don’t we all. They each made some very poor decisions - humans do. But on most matters their hearts and minds were in the right place and they put America’s long-term interests first.

Let’s start with President Kennedy. As a native Bay-Stater he get’s first nod. And this past summer, with multiple visits to the ocean beaches of Orleans, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown I could not help but murmur many “thank yous” for his visionary idea about the Cape Cod National Seashore. His idea and his initiative saved what would have been certainly lost to the developer’s backhoe and millionaires’ mansions. In doing so, he made multiple generations of Americans little millionaires.

Those ocean beaches are spectacular national assets, open to all and beloved by both natives and tourists. No one can doubt that a failure to act by the Congress or a failure to lead by the President would have resulted in honky-tonk development, interrupted only by gated private estates. The fact that much of the land in question was already held in private hands made the legislation quite challenging and the feat quite impressive. Sensitivity, patience, compromise, and reason were harnessed to the public good and we are the beneficiaries. Enjoy your visits. Leave only footprints. Teach your children. And thank JFK.

Regarding President Nixon, I often think of him during my early morning swims. I have a summer habit of rising before the sun, walking to the beach, and swimming in solitude during dawn’s calm. The water is clean, green, and delightful. My companions are the fish and the birds. I call it “my millionaire’s swim” for the joy and appreciation it brings.

President Nixon you might recall lead the charge and signed the legislation creating the EPA. He had foresight and a strong sense of right and wrong regarding our wasting environment. The nation’s soil, air, and waters had become increasingly fouled and Nixon sensed, properly, that individual states, acting on their own, would be played mercilessly by economic interests resistant to change. He grasped the concept and made the case that rational and reasonable regulation of pollutants was in the nation’s best interests. Today, our nation’s health, its soil, air, and waters are measurably improved and our quality of life is markedly better. So thanks too to President Nixon. He had vision and he had moxie and he lead us to a better place.

A final thought---our current politics are a nasty cauldron of ideology and accusation. Politics has always been an exhausting and oft-times thankless set of tasks. Foreign affairs are complicated affairs, education is an immensely frustrating issue, and paying, or more realistically not paying, for all the things that Americans now seem to expect and demand from government has lead us to the verge of bankruptcy. The red-state vs. blue-state syndrome is polarizing and probably renders us incapable of making honest assessments about contemporary leaders. There are opinions galore about George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, none of those opinions seasoned enough by the passage of time and the accumulation of knowledge.

Not so with Presidents Kennedy and Nixon. More than fifty years have passed since JFK signed the Cape Cod National Seashore Act. More than forty years have passed since Richard Nixon entered the White House as President and began the reversal of poisoning the environment. I believe that it’s never too late to say “thank you”. So thank you JFK. And thank you RMN. I’m a grateful American and my summer reminded me that you served us well.

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Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

 

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